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We did it! A wave of frontline leadership made a strong statement yesterday that as Oregonians we do not accept hate towards our communities and that we have the right to build the new! It is the right thing to do, and we have very right to do it! We defeated Measure 105 and OJTA members in Portland passed the Portland Clean Energy Initiative. We showed that when frontline communities lead the way we have better results all across the board.

We showed that we are unstoppable and another world is possible- a world that doesn’t leave anyone behind. One that is welcoming to everyone regardless of the color of your skin. The defeat of Measure 105 showed that despite the anti-immigrant rhetoric we hear on the news, the voices of those who stood against hate and with our immigrant communities were louder, mobilized others, and won. This is a victory and we must celebrate, but we must also continue to work towards the decriminalization of our communities regardless of immigration status. One’s documentation should not dictate how one is able to move in our world. There will be more attacks coming. We must take this victory, learn from our success, and be prepared for whatever comes next, always keeping in mind the safety of our immigrant communities.

In this election we did not just fight against what we do not want. We held strong to our vision of a more regenerative economy, one that uplifts those most impacted by climate change, economic exploitation and white supremacy. We changed the rules to build wealth and power for our communities. A frontline-led coalition passed the Portland Clean Energy Initiative, which will generate $30 million annually for green jobs, clean energy, and lower utility bills for our communities in Portland. The initiative was won through grassroots community organizing, including in communities that are often ignored by political campaigns.

Our communities organized and mobilized neighborhoods across Oregon and the country. We galvanized individuals who would have not voted otherwise if their native language was not spoken to them. Thank you! All the calls you made, all the doors you knocked, all the conversations you had, made this happen. Our state’s frontline communities should be more than proud!

We know the fight is not over, we must still stop the Liquefied Natural Gas Pipeline and the Jordan Cove Terminal. Locally, regionally, nationally and globally we will continue to stand in solidarity and organize, organize, organize. We will keep building power for a just transition a forward-looking, inclusive and equitable vision.

From Hate to Hope Recap

The Oregon Just Transition Alliance would like to thank the Energy Democracy Tour Network and Reyna Lopez of Pineros Y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN) and Khanh Pham of Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (APANO) for taking the time to speak with María Hernández Segoviano of OPAL on the Just Transition strategies they are currently utilizing to end the bad and build the new in Oregon. Each of these organizations is working to Change the Rules here in Oregon. Each organization is involved organizing across the state against Measure 105, appearing on the November ballot, , and APANO and OPAL are on the steering committee guiding the Portland Clean Energy Initiative (PCEI) at the local level in Portland.

“We defend the right for people to migrate, but we also defend the right for people to stay in the places they’ve been in for generations,” said Reyna Lopez. Measure 105 is an attack on our immigrant communities, which is why PCUN and many other organizations across the state have been mobilizing voters to vote NO on Measure 105, as it threatens the livelihoods of our communities. The measure will make racial profiling legal in Oregon, and allow for the militarization of all of our communities, regardless of documentation status, across the state. Immigrants, like all people, just want to work and live in peace. Measure 105 criminalizes these people based on their documentation status. Migration is not a stand-alone phenomenon. Our migrant communities do not want to leave the place their grandparents and those before them have called home for generations, but economic instability and climate change are constantly forcing families to uproot their lives and migrate. We must stand in support of our immigrant communities and stop Measure 105.

“PCEI is more than just a policy on the ballot: it allows us to think beyond what is politically possible. It holds large corporations accountable to the communities they operate in,” says Khanh Pham. The Portland Clean Energy Initiative was put on the ballot by a coalition of people of color led organizations in Portland. It is a great example of how decision making rooted in community organizing allows us to directly participate in democratic process and put forth initiatives that allow us to move towards a just energy transition for low-income earning individuals and people of color. The Portland Clean Energy Initiative invests in renewable energy, energy efficiency projects, and weatherization updates so that the already rising cost of living in Portland can me mediated with lower utility bills through a move towards a more renewable economy, creating job opportunities and making energy efficiency affordable.

Measure 105 and the Portland Clean Energy Initiative show us the interconnection between climate justice and immigrant justice. Many of the people who immigrate to the US are leaving areas wracked by climate change, or because of militarism which is one of the principle causes of climate change. Human beings deserve to move freely to escape flooding, fire, violence, and lack of opportunity.

The campaigns to stop Measure 105 and to win the Portland Clean Energy Initiative (Portland Measure 26-201) will Change the Rules and lead to better outcomes in our community. PCUN and APANO have been at the forefront of these efforts. This is how Portland Clean Energy Initiative ended up on the ballot, how PCUN is organizing against Measure 105, and how both organizations are challenging the opposition’s narrative and mobilizing voters and building power. Check out the full video below.

Join in changing the rules with us! Every phone call you make, door you knock, post you make conversation you have- spread the word on #noon105 and #yeson201. BALLOTS ARE DUE BY 8PM ON NOVEMBER 6TH! This is a crucial time for Portland and Oregon, and it is a movement moment to build power and turn out our people to vote. Check out all of the upcoming campaign events hereNO on 105 Campaign andPortland Clean Energy Initiative. There are several opportunities to get involved between now and November 6th!

After an exhaustive nationwide search, we are proud to introduce Janaira Ramirez, our new Oregon Just Transition Alliance Organizer!

Janaira was born and raised in New York City, the oldest of three daughters born to Dominican parents. She relocated to Portland this week, but began remotely onboarding with OPAL at the beginning of September. Growing up between New York City and the Dominican Republic exposed Janaira to the politics of transnational migration at an early age. “I witnessed unjust governmental as well as day-to-day interactions between migrant populations in the United States as well as in the Dominican Republic.,” Janaira says. “It really made me aware of how drastic the power dynamic shifts from setting to setting.” She was stuck at a very early age that an oppressed group in the one setting may perpetuate oppression onto another group in another setting. Having one foot in the US where she was born and raised, but the other foot in her parents’ home country made relationships of power a point of interest for Janaira, “even before I was able to critically think about the dynamics I was witnessing and experiencing,” she says.

Janaira began organizing around public education reforms and food justice/food security as a youth organizer of The Brotherhood-SisterSol in Harlem, NY. “As a youth organizer I was not only able to deepen my passion social justice, but I was overjoyed by the democratization processes we took as a team to ensure that our common needs and values and those of the different communities we were part of were represented in each of our campaigns,” she says. During her undergraduate studies at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, Janaira obtained a Bachelor of Arts in political science. “I focused a lot of political theory and the notions of power, public policy, and conducted data driven research on food security in the United States,” she says. During her time at Wheaton, Janaira had the opportunity to travel overseas and learn from and share with communities in Ahmedabad in India, São Paulo in Brazil, and Dakar in Senegal, as experience she describes as “amazing.”

“My studies and research in each of the three countries focused on how marginalized communities changed the narrative, from focusing on the ways in which they experience oppression to instead focus on how they organized, built resistance, and launched initiatives.,” Janaira says of communities who organized to combat displacement, food injustice, and environmental degradation. She focused on the specific initiatives local community groups organized and implemented to become self-determinant and to alleviate the varying needs of their communities.

“It was motivational and uplifting to learn from groups working to dignify labor and dignify the informal economy which was so prevalent and the main source of employment in many communities,” she says. Janaira worked alongside groups organizing against slum relocation programs that often isolated slum dwellers too far from accessible means of transportation and too far from their places of employment. She studied groups advocating for clean waterways and clean air, a major concern in many of the places she lived these studies overseas. She learned the stories of groups who started and cultivated urban gardens to combat food insecurity and provide their community with sources of employment. She saw groups re-imagine cities to become better connected to the nearby villages, as migrant workers do not want to leave their homes and families but more employment opportunities often exist in cities and therefore rural-urban daily migration was necessary. This wealth of experience give Janaira the unique qualifications to organize the statewide movement for a Just Transition, build power in communities living at the intersection of many oppressions, and build solidarity across communities with interests sometimes understood to compete.

“Having the amazing opportunity to learn from and share with these groups really pushed me further into social justice organizing work,” Janaira says. “I am stoked to continue doing this work with OPAL and continuing to learn.”

The community gathering will include public education to explain the climate connection to a wide range of racial and social justice issues.

WHY: This year’s the Rise for Climate, Jobs and Justice will draw attention to the intersecting issues facing frontline communities in the struggle for climate justice. Housing, transportation, access to green spaces and food, and the struggles for workers’ rights, immigrant rights, and the rights of other marginalized communities must all be at the center of this struggle for climate action. For people to win over profits, we must demand liberation from an economy built on extraction, exploitation, militarism, and systems of social oppression.

Oregon Just Transition Alliance (OJTA) builds unity among frontline communities. It’s necessary to center the most-impacted people in discussions of climate justice. The Portland Rise for Climate, Jobs and Justice platform states, “people of color, low income communities, and rural and tribal people are at the front line of environmental and climate injustice- our communities must lead the efforts to address climate change. Climate change is only a symptom of much deeper crises that are happening worldwide- the ecological crisis, economic crisis, and the crisis of empire. These crises come from the current dominant economy, created by a system that only works for a few which relies on exploitation and extraction of resources. We must create a system that works for everyone, based on cooperation, close communities, and regenerative processes.” We’re past the tipping point. The threats to frontline communities are present today.

An extractive economic system is rooted in and perpetuated by the extraction of our most precious resources. It is a constant state of digging up our resources, burning them, and then dumping the results with little to no regard for pollution’s contamination, toxicity, and desecration of Earth, our sacred home. Human labor is exploited across many sectors, with a long history of workers’ health not being taken into consideration. The purpose of exploiting labor to desecrate resources has been the constant concentration of wealth and power into the hands of the few, with little challenge to that dominance. In other words, the manifestation of this economic system is placing profit over people.

We see how the fossil fuel industry advances this purpose. Coal, oil and gas barons, the wealthiest corporations and individuals on Earth, put profit over people and exhaust human capacity, and perpetuate the idea that their system is inevitable and necessary, when this is false and damaging.

For these reasons and many more, the Oregon Just Transition Alliance has voted to officially oppose the construction of the Pacific Connector Pipeline and Jordan Cove Terminal.

The Jordan Cove Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) Export Terminal and Pacific Connector Pipeline is a significant threat to indigenous sovereignty and tribal treaty rights, human health, and planetary survival. Cultural resources, traditional tribal territories and burial grounds are threatened by both the pipeline route and the LNG export facility. Additionally, the project would impact waters and wildlife of current, historical, and spiritual importance to the Tribes. The Karuk, Yurok, and Klamath Tribes have all come out in opposition to opposing the Jordan Cove LNG Export Terminal and the Pacific Connector Pipeline.

In solidarity with national and global fights we must seek solutions that build and grow the regenerative economy, which don’t continue to be dependent on the extraction of our resources and the erasure of sacred lands.

Please join Oregon PSR for a fun presentation of “The Folly of Frack,” to be followed by a presentation on the proposed Jordan Cove Energy Project/Pacific Connector Gas Pipeline and on-site comment writing. August 13 from 6:30-8:30pm, RSVP HERE

Join community members on Thursday, August 16 from 11am-12pm at the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) office in Medford for a rally and delivery of over 17,000 public comments demanding DEQ denies clean water act permits and puts to rest the Jordan Cove LNG export terminal and Pacific Connector fracked gas pipeline. RSVP HERE

Oregon Just Transition Alliance is grounded in core principles that center community resilience and inter-community collaborative resistance. We are aiming not only for systems change but also a cultural shift from anti-immigrant and refugee policies that contribute to the exploitation of those hit first and worst by such harsh immigration enforcement tactics.

Therefore, the Steering Committee of OJTA has voted to oppose Ballot Measure 105, a measure that will throw out Oregon’s sanctuary state law. This law that has been working for more than 30 years to protect Oregonians from unfair racial profiling. If Ballot Measure 105 passes, it could open the door to racial profiling and families being torn apart, simply because someone is perceived to be an undocumented immigrant.

Immigrants are a vital part of our member communities; they are farmworkers, workers, volunteers, activists, organizers, and more importantly human beings. Our communities are stronger and more vibrant because of immigrants.

Did you miss the the last Just Transition Webinar? See the recap and recording below.

Divesting from sources that continue to fuel the extractive economy and exploit our communities requires bold leadership, and commitment from those who support us to follow frontline leadership.

On our last webinar, we heard from Jamie Trinkle, a Senior Campaign and Research Coordinator at Enlace working against transnational corporations and building capacity at partner organizations to divest from prisons through their National Prison Divestment Campaign. Jamie shared how Enlace is utilizing divestment as a tactic to impact multiple targets that profit from locking our community members behind bars. We have the right to choose where our money is invested, and it should be invested to help our communities succeed. Jaime also spoke on the importance of having impacted communities in the decision making process of how money divested should be reinvested in our communities.

Ananda Lee Tan, Campaigns Director of the Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) spoke towards the importance of moving money that has historically fueled how decisions or policies get made. Ananda spoke about the work of the Climate Justice Alliance in their campaign Invest in Our Power, in particular with a focus on philanthropy to address three critical conditions. First, the resource disparity between environmental justice groups and environmental groups. Second, the capacity difference between environmental justice groups and traditional environmentalists, and compensating the time of environmental justice groups in order to join the conversation. Third, the recognition of the diverse theories of change of environmental justice groups.

Join Our Upcoming Webinar: Change the Rules

Tuesday, September 28th 2018

Time:6:00-7:30 pm

With excitement, Oregon Just Transition Alliance invites you to join us on September 8th and Rise for Climate, Jobs, and Justice in Oregon! In Oregon, frontline communities of our alliance have endorsed an intersectional climate justice platform: we oppose construction of fossil fuel infrastructure, we oppose hateful policies like Measure 105, and we support frontline leaders developing solutions that change the rules and draw down wealth and power, like the Portland Clean Energy Fund. Across the country, and around the world, our communities will Rise for Climate, Jobs, and Justice. We rise for climate action to communicate to global and local leaders that a strong US climate movement exists and to tell everyone in the US that the time has come to hold our leaders accountable.

Join one of the Art Making events happening on August 18th, 25th and 27th. Info here.

Following September 8th, OJTA members are joining our frontline leaders from across the nation to continue to build our people power during the It Takes Roots week of actions in the Bay Area. We will participate in local tours of the frontlines of climate injustice, and will attend a Solutions to Solidarity Summit (Sol2Sol) on September 11th. Interested in learning more? Reach out to maria@orjta.org

We call upon Oregon’s environmental, labor, racial, social, and economic justice communities and allies to stand with us and support the leadership of most-impacted people. A strong US Climate movement DOES exist, and we’re fighting to fix a broken, unsustainable economy. Here in Oregon, impacted communities, workers, and climate-minded cities and townships are already leading the way. Our communities are identifying solutions that will address the climate realities faced by frontline communities. We demand that leaders commit to strong solutions anchored in economic and racial justice. And we leverage our growing power to make sure those leaders honor their commitments.

For the past year and a half, the Oregon Just Transition Alliance has been building a movement for climate justice with leadership of base building organizations in the state of Oregon. We are looking for our Oregon Just Transition Alliance Organizer to build with us a movement to stop the bad and build the new with leadership of those most impacted and on the forefront of environmental racism, economic exploitation, and climate change. Join our team!

OPAL Environmental Justice Oregon is seeking a passionate, dedicated individual to join our growing team of organizers for social justice. The Oregon Just Transition Alliance Organizer reports to the Executive Director, and works with a broad network of state and local partners to advance key policy and advocacy priorities, as informed by OPAL’s organized membership base.

Background:

OPAL Environmental Justice Oregon founded the Oregon Just Transition Alliance in 2017. The alliance brings together frontline communities to “Build the New”.

The Oregon Just Transition Alliance is a statewide network of organizations actively building a grassroots movement in environmental justice and climate justice communities across the state of Oregon.

The Organizer will work closely with current, new and potential alliance members to build power, deepen partners’ involvement and analysis to advance an Oregon Climate and Environmental Justice Agenda.

Qualifications: Experience working with low-income communities and communities of color; Understanding of and commitment to Environmental Justice and Climate Justice principles and the Just Transition framework; Strong planning and facilitation skills and popular education-style training experience; Coalition-building, grassroots organizing and campaign experience preferred.

This position will require some statewide travel to urban and rural communities; as an organization committed to challenging traditional models of organizing and in proactively practicing ways to reduce our organizational carbon footprint, a Driver’s License and personal automobile are not required – but demonstrated experience and success in telecommuting and excellent communication skills are.

Key Duties:

ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Responsible for developing year-long training schedule for Oregon Just Transition Alliance members and supporters.

Supports the organizational development of the Oregon Just Transition Alliance through but not limited to: organizing monthly Alliance coordinating calls, activities and plans intended to deepen member relationships with one another, and strengthen internal Alliance processes.

Ensure strategic planning and organizational priorities are grounded in Environmental Justice values and are well-represented throughout OPAL and OJTA work areas

Ensure OPAL and OJTA short-term strategic plans and priorities support a long-term vision for an Environmental Justice movement building and transformative change.

PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT, IMPLEMENTATION & MANAGEMENT

Offer technical assistance and intentional political education in examining existing or proposed rules and regulations relating to environmental justice, climate justice and a just transition.

Support the development of the Oregon Just Transition Agenda incorporating climate, environmental, economic, racial and social justice. Efforts will include, but are not limited to: statewide work planning; identifying shared priorities with organizational partners; analysis of proposed and existing plans for policy action; and leadership development of community members to engage in policy making at local, regional and statewide levels.

Working with the Advocacy Coordinator in supporting Alliance members in identifying policy and advocacy pathways.

Ensure policy goals and advocacy campaigns are supportive of and determined by on-the-ground community organizing efforts across all program areas.

Build upon OPAL’s track record of member-led participatory research and organizing to inform OPAL and OJTA campaigns and tactics, and facilitate such processes for future campaigns.

There is great work being done across the globe around unified divestment efforts such as Prison Divestment, DeFundDAPL Fossil Fuel Divestment and much more. Moving to a Regenerative Economy requires for us to not just stop with divestment. It’s critical to move capital into Indigenous, Black, immigrant, and working-class communities on the frontlines of the extractive economy. Capital must be put to use to build transformative local living economies under the governance of communities themselves rather than destructive financiers far from the impact of financial decisions.

Join us this upcoming Tuesday for the third Just Transition Webinar as we discuss the third strategy to move us from the extractive economy to a living/regenerative economy.

This webinar will bring together organizers who are leaders in challenging the extractive economy and pushing a fair shift to an economy that is ecologically sustainable, equitable and just for all its members: